The major goal of the X Consortium
was to promote cooperation within the computer industry in the creation
of standard software interfaces at all layers in the X Window System environment.
The X Consortium produced standards - documents which defined network
protocols, programming interfaces, and other aspects of the X environment.
These standards continue to exist in The Open Group's X Project Team releases.
The X Project Team produces specifications. Like X Consortium Standards,
these are documents which define network protocols, programming interfaces,
and other aspects of the X environment. Under the aegis of The Open Group,
X Consortium standards, X Project Team specifications, and other specifications
are the basis for portions of The Open Group's various CAE specifications.

The status of various standards, specifications, and the software in the
X11R6.4 distribution, is explained below.

The X11R6.4 distribution contains sample implementations,
not reference implementations. Although much of the code is believed to
be correct, the code should be assumed to be in error wherever it conflicts
with the specification.

The only X Consortium standards are the ones listed
above. No other documents, include files, or software in X11R6.4 carry special
status within the X Consortium. For example, none of the following are
standards: internal interfaces of the sample server; the MIT-SHM extension;
the Athena Widget Set; the Xmu library; the Xau library; the RGB database;
the X Locale database; the fonts distributed with X11R6.4; the applications
distributed with X11R6.4; the include files <X11/XWDFile.h>, <X11/Xfuncproto.h>,
<X11/Xfuncs.h>, <X11/Xosdefs.h>, <X11/Xos.h>, <X11/Xos_r.h>, <X11/Xwinsock.h>, and <X11/Xthreads.h>;
the bitmap files in <X11/bitmaps>.

The Multi-Buffering extension was a draft
standard of the X Consortium but has been superseded by DBE as a standard.

The X Consortium maintained a registry of certain X-related items,
to aid in avoiding conflicts and to aid in sharing of such items.

The registry
is published as part of the X Consortium software release. The latest version
may also be available by sending a message to xstuff@x.org. The message
can have a subject line and no body, or a single-line body and no subject,
in either case the line looking like: